SITE Summer Workshops 2018

This session will discuss the latest advances in theoretical and empirical issues related to financial regulation. Topics will include, but will not be limited to, connections of regulation for intermediaries, households and policymakers in the U.S. and outside the U.S.

The papers for this session are invited from the fields of empirical Industrial Organization (IO), Labor Economics, Public Finance, and Health Economics, Environmental and Energy Economics, and Development Economics. The unifying feature of the papers should be that they each contain a theoretical model of an economic interaction and an empirical implementation of this theoretical model using actual data. Popular topics for papers from previous years—the empirical implementation of models of auction market equilibrium, discrete choice models of differentiated product demand and oligopoly equilibrium, dynamic models of individual and group behavior, and analysis of experiment data of policy interventions in circumstances of non-random assignment or self-selection. A clear link between the theoretical economic model and econometric model should be a hallmark of the papers presented.

Aislinn Bohren, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pennsylvania

Lucas Maestri, FGV/EPGE

Andrzej Skrzypacz, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Takuo Sugaya, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Juuso Toikka, MIT

This session is being held at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Room C-106

The idea of this session is to bring together microeconomic theorists working on dynamic games and contracts with more applied theorists working in macro, finance, organizational economics, and other fields. First, this is a venue to discuss the latest questions and techniques facing researchers working in dynamic games and contracts. Second, we wish to foster interdisciplinary discussion between scholars working on parallel topics in different disciplines, in particular, helping raise awareness among theorists of the open questions in other fields. We’re aiming for a roughly even split between micro theory papers and papers from other areas. Specific topics likely to be covered include repeated and stochastic games, dynamic optimal contracts, dynamic market pricing, reputation, search, and learning and experimentation.

This session is being held in the Koret Room of the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building, 366 Galvez Street (SIEPR) Next to the Economics Building

This workshop will be dedicated to advances in experimental economics combining laboratory and field-experimental methodologies with theoretical and psychological insights on decision-making, strategic interaction and policy. We invite papers in lab experiments, field experiments and their combination that test theory, demonstrate the importance of psychological phenomena, and explore social and policy issues. In addition to senior faculty members, invited presenters will include junior faculty as well as graduate students.

This session is being held in the Koret Room of the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building, 366 Galvez Street (SIEPR) Next to the Economics Building

The purpose of this SITE workshop is to bring together researchers working on issues at the intersection of psychology and economics. The workshop focuses on evidence of and explanations for non-standard choice patterns, as well as the positive and normative implications of those patterns in important economic decision-making contexts such as lifecycle consumption and savings, labor supply, effort provision, financial contracting, and firm pricing. Many past presenters at this workshop have built upon insights from other disciplines, including psychology and sociology. Theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies will be included.

The session will cover recent work on the causes and effects of changes in volatility and uncertainty in the aggregate economy, which is incredibly topical given the recent Brexit and Trump election outcomes. Many observers, including policymakers such as Bernanke, Summers, and Romer, have highlighted that these have been major driving factors in the recent credit-crunch recession and advanced heuristic arguments of why this might have been the case. Unfortunately, our theoretical and empirical understanding of these topics is limited since only recently have macroeconomist started working on these issues from a more systematic basis. Nevertheless, the preliminary results in the literature, to which all three of us have contributed, are rather encouraging. Changes in volatility and uncertainty similar to the ones observed for the U.S. economy can be shown to be quantitatively significant factors in business cycle fluctuations and a key element in a successful explanation of aggregate fluctuations. Moreover, the presence of changes in volatility and uncertainty has important implications for the design of optimal policies and for our assessment of the responses of central banks and fiscal authorities to recent developments in the world economy. Therefore, the session will aim to include about 14 recent papers on these topics. Our goal is to have a balanced mix of theoretical and empirical papers and a strong interest in applications to policy.

Macroeconomics increasingly emphasizes inequality. When heterogeneous agents interact in frictional markets, macro aggregates depend on the distribution of wealth and cannot be characterized by a representative agent. At the same time, macro shocks and policies have redistributive effects. This session aims to bring together researchers working on macro and inequality. We welcome theoretical work on heterogeneous agent models, empirical studies with micro data and combinations thereof. We expect to attract both macroeconomists as well as applied micro economists working on labor economics, firm dynamics, international economics, urban economics and household finance.

This session will bring together labor economists and macroeconomists with interests in labor markets with two goals. The first goal is to be a venue to discuss the latest research about labor markets. The second goal is to promote intellectual exchange among scholars working on similar topics but with different approaches. Specific topics will depend on the submissions, but likely include inequality, unemployment and vacancies, and the interplay between labor markets, consumption, and the business cycle.

We want to bring together researchers who study banks and financial frictions. The questions we want to address are: What is the role of banks in competition with other financial institutions? What is the impact of concentration among the largest banks? What is the importance of banks for payments? Are banks special in their ability to screen borrowers among households and firms? Do banks take risks or do they hedge? What is their role in markets for complex assets (such as asset-backed securities or other derivatives)? How has recent regulation and ongoing initiatives to change regulations affected banks? How can households and firms get access to funding when banks are in trouble?

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers working on both theoretical and empirical analyses of economic development. In the past we have had a specific theme but this year we are accepting papers on all domains within development.

This session focuses on recent advances in equilibrium asset pricing models. Possible topics include but are not limited to the following: learning and ambiguity in asset pricing models, investor heterogeneity, the term structure of risks or new preference structures for pricing models. As the analysis of such models often requires the use of computational methods, we encourage submissions that develop and make use of new numerical techniques.

This session is being held in Room 105 of the Lou Henry Hoover Building, across Serra street from the Economics Department.

SITE is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). SITE receives additional support from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Stanford School of Humanities & Sciences, Department of Economics.